Assessing Housing Needs in Allston Brighton
PPUA7673 Capstone SPPUA |Spring 2019
Adam Ferreira, Cory Leblanc, Daniel Doherty, Tejas Rawal
12 April, 2019
1 Introduction
The Allston Brighton CDC is in an on-going effort to increase the supply of stable housing in response to rapid changes within the community including the impact of the skyrocketing cost of living in Allston and Brighton. The vision of Allston Brighton CDC is to Foster a vibrant neighbourhood where people of diverse incomes, races, and genders can live and work while maintaining secure housing.
The goal of this project is to paint a picture of the current housing situation and community priorities in Allston-Brighton. This project aims at developing a report that will help Allston Brighton CDC to identify and utilize geospatial information systems (GIS) to display various Allston-Brighton spatial housing data in a user-friendly manner, also to understand data visualization to display various Allston-Brighton housing data trends and statistics; and lastly provide them with an effective survey to determine what community benefits that are desired by residents of Allston-Brighton.
1.1 Methodology
In this part of the project following are the tasks that have been carried to understand data visualization to display various Allston-Brighton housing data trends and statistics.
-Research and identify housing and demography data sets
-Isolate Allston-Brighton data in data sets using R
-Clean and format data for mapping and visualization using R
-Identify various housing trends using property assessment data & more
-Identify various socio-economic trends using U.S. census data at the census tract level of analysis using R
The Allston Brighton CDC primarily identified the property assessment dataset which is available on Boston City website for the year 2018 to identify number of owner occupied and non-owner occupied properties. However, it was possible to extract data for Allston Brighton, based on availability of data and the dimensionality of those, from year 2008 to 2018. This time series analysis approach has been adopted here as it is crucial to understand property growth based on type of the property to explore the patterns within the datasets and associated trends of owner occupancy in Allston Brighton, as per the need of client.
Another useful dataset that has been utilised is 311 complaint calls from year 2011 to 2018. This is particularly helpful in identifying problematic areas of physical infrastructure and potential community benefits to focus on. Census tracts data has been identified and analysed to understand demographic and socioeconomic structure of Allston and Brighton. The datasets have been processed and analysed in programming based statistical analysis software R.
The Allston Brighton data have been isolated from above mentioned datasets based on zip codes and then used further. These Allston Brighton datasets had few impurities and inconsistencies like NA values and empty cells which were converted to 0, so that they don’t get omitted in analysis.
The trend analysis has also been carried out by utilising the datasets from year 2008 to year 2018. The trends of housing stock are analysed by comparison, in various types of residential properties like single family home, 2 family home, 3 family home, and condominiums. Commercial, industrial, vacant lots, tax exempt properties and their stocks are also compared over the years 2008 to 2018. Apart from change in housing stocks, the owner occupancy, average property price, year built, number of floors in properties, and more, changes over the years 2008 to 2018 have also been analysed.
2 Property Growth
Understanding the growth in property stock is key to understand the dynamics of the neighborhood. The type of property is an interesting economic indicator. Increase in residential or commercial types of property stock over the period of time suggests the stable social values or economic vibrancy in the neighbourhood. the Allston Brighton neighbourhoods have been analysed in this regard for observing the growth from year 2008 to 2018 and their trends are as shown below.
2.1 Residential Property Growth
The residential property types havenot seen much of the growth over the 10 years but the the minute changes that is worth mentioning are for residential condos, single family homes, 2 family homes and three family homes. While the residential condo share has increased slightly by about 1 percent, the single family homes, 2 family homes and three family homes shares have reduced between 1.5 to 2 percent. The influx of condominiums in the neighborhoods has also affected the condominium main and condominium parking property types.
2.2 Non-Residential Property Growth
Non residentail properties like commercial, commercial condos, tax-exepmt and mixedd use buildings, have observed growth in the percent share of the total properties. Commercial land and industrial properties shares have decreased in last 10 years. The most intresting has been Industrial property type share. In year 2011 the industrial properties had reduces quite drasticaly. This could be due to conversion of industrial properties to residential condos or commercial.
2.3 Numbers
Following charts represent the property stock for each property type from the year 2008 to 2018. The above percentage shares have been calculated form these numbers.
2.3.1 Residential Condominiums
2.3.2 Family Homes
2.3.3 Non-Residential
2.3.4 Non-Residential
2.3.5 Tax Exempt
3 Owner Occupancy
Allston and Brighton neighborhoods are being overrun with overpriced investor-owned housing units. Owner-occupancy helps to stabilize an increasingly transient neighborhood. Allston and Brighton neighbourhoods’ owner-occupancy rates are among the lowest in Boston city. Following are the few owner occupancy aspects of the neighborhood that have been explored.
3.1 More than 10 Properties Owners
The above graph has been worked out to identify owners that own more than 10 properties based on property owner frequency from the dataset. “Trustees of Boston College” owns highest number of properties (203). Second highest is “City of Boston” and third highest is “Harvard College” with 71 and 55 owned properties respectively. This analysis is to emphasise on the current situation of commercialization and accumulation of real eastate market in Alston-Brighton. There are more than 40 companies/organisations that own more than 10 properties as shown above.
3.2 Non-Owner Properties
The same properties which are rented, as shown in the previos graph, are shown here in a diffret way to understand how many non-Owner occupied properties are owned by an owner. The highest is the single property owners that is non-owner occcupied, which accounts for 84.52 percent. Rest 15.48 percent is of the property owners owns more than 1 property that is non-owner occupied.
3.3 Residential Condominiums
The housig stock of residential condos has increased and at the same time owner occupancy has reduced over the last 10 years. This can be viewd as the ongoing and increasing trend of original residents moving out of Allston-Brighton and more and more renters coming in to the neighborhood because of the closer vicinity of major universities, institutions and Boston in genral.
3.4 Other Residential
Similar trend, as residential condominiums, is also seen in singal family home, two family home three family homes and four family homes. the owner occupancy is getting lower year by year acoording to the data.
4 Property Value and Area
Property values and livable area of the roperties is an important aspect to look for better assessment of the housing needs in a neighbourhood. The neighborhood tends to have smaller living area and higher poperty value because of the demand, as seen in many of parts of the popular and fast growing cities due to influx of more people and congestion. Various measuring statistics like average propery value, average living area and property price per square feet have been worked out here to get a clear picture of change in the last 10 years.
4.1 Average Value: Residential
The average propery values, acoording tothe data, have increased drastically over th last 10 years. For 4 family homes, 3 family homes 2 family homes, single family homes and residential condominiums the preperty price increased by 47.36 percent, 62.5 percent, 56.55 percent, 34.45 percent and 37.39 percent respectively in property value from year 2008 to 2018. This represents the increased level of real estate demand and willingness to pay higher price for a property to live in Allston-Brighton.
4.2 Average Value: Non-Residential
Similar to residential properties the non-residential property values have also increased over time. However the percentage change is even more dramatic for non-residentials. At the top is mixed use property type with 185.71 percent increase, and Commercial properties and commercial land increased value by 146 percent and 128.41 percent respectively.
4.3 Average Living Area : Residential
Surprisingly the average living areas for all the residential property types has not increased, rather has been moreor less same over the course of last 10 years.
4.4 Average Value/Sq.Ft : Residential
The average of property price per square feet, graph above, shows steady increse in property value. In almost all property types the effect of post 2008 financial depression is evedent, which regained its upward trend after year 2013 and has been increasing ever since. Especially residential condos have seen substantial gain in value per square feet because of the demand from the younger student and working population wanting to live near to the city.
5 Year Built
Understanding the distribution of properties from their built year point of view is important to see during which time the growth of perticular type of properties actually happened. This helps in explaining the direction of growth in realestate over the course of time.
The cumulative percent of all residential property type shown in the table and graph below, indicates the housing stocks built by year 1900, 1950 and 2000. Except residential condo, all the familily home property types have similar trend. Around 15 to 30 percent of the family properties were built by year 1900 which increased to about 80 to 97 percent by the year 1950. The residential condos had slow start with only 7 percent built by the year 1900 and by 1950 the condo stock increased up to 67 percent of the total condominiums in Allston-Brighton.
| 1Family | 2Family | 3Family | 4Family | Resi Condo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 29% | 25% | 29% | 15% | 7% |
| 1950 | 81% | 95% | 97% | 94% | 67% |
| 2000 | 98% | 99% | 99% | 98% | 94% |
6 Number of Floors
Increase in urban population density and demand of living close to economic urban centers has led to growth of cities in vertical direction. Manhattan, New York is the best example of this situation. Allston-Brighton is no different from these changes. Increase in high rise buildings being developed have been observed in these areas. Though most of the highrise buildings are commercial properties, many new projects would also be coming up for residential use buildings in near future, because of increasing demand from students and young working population in the neighborhoods.
Following are the two graphs that represent the number of floors in the residential units. Most of the residential condos have one floor and very few have more than 1 floors levels compared to other residential property type. In single family homes and two family homes the most common floor living levels are two. Three family homes and four family homes, mostly consists of 3 and 4 storied structures. Here the interesting thing about this finding is that this data provides the number of living levels in the residential unit and not relative position of the unit in the building. Based on this understanding we cannot say anything about the vertical growth of the neighborhoods resulted out of growing density.
6.1 Residential Condominiums
6.2 Family Homes
7 Building Permits
The Inspectional Services Department (ISD) issues building permits for construction projects within the City of Boston. Various projects require different types of applications, and work cannot begin until a building permit card is issued. Permits are valid for six months starting on the day that they are received and may occasionally be extended for an additional 180 days.
The building permits have been studied here in terms of overall frequency and work type from year 2010 to 2018. From the trend line we see that the average number of building permits issued were around 3 per day in beginning of year 2010 which has increased to 5 per day. The work type frequency indicates that electrical permits and occupancy change permits are the two highest permits sought for by the residents of Allston-Brighton. This analysis is useful to identify community needs in terms of ease and convenience to get work done involving stake holders like city administration, official inspections and contractors.
8 311-Calls
Boston 311 is to better equip the city residents with a direct line of communication to City Hall while at the same time improving the delivery of City services. This helps building on priorities to create a City government that is efficient and accessible to all of Boston’s residents. - Mayor Martin J. Boston 311 calls have increased over the time. Since April-2013 to September 2017 the 311 request calls have increased by 36%. Weekly average of about 800 requests are received as of September 2018. In Allston-Brighton the weekly average has increased from 10 complaints per day during the end of 2011 to 26 complaints per day in the beginning of year 2019. Seasonal variations of complaint calls are quite evident from the graph below. During winter, especially around January and February, the calls increase quite dramatically with the snow ploughing complaints.
8.1 Reasons for 311 Calls
Following chart shows the frequency of 311 calls made during July 2011 to January 2019 for various reasons. Sanitation complaint calls are the highest, second are the parking enforcement and abandoned vehicle complaints. Very close to that are the street cleaning complaints. Highway maintainance also has quite high complaint calls.
All these reasons of 311 calls have their various types as shown below.
8.1.1 Sanitation
8.1.2 Parking
8.1.3 Street Cleaning
8.1.4 Highway Maintenance
8.1.5 Signals
8.1.6 Code Enforcement
8.1.7 Housing
8.1.8 Recycling
8.1.9 Building
8.1.10 Street Lights
8.1.11 Environment
8.1.12 Trees
8.2 311 Calls by Source
There basicaly five sources of registering the 311 complaint. The constituent call is the most popular complaint filing method amongst the Allston-Brighton residents. Another popular method is via Citizen Connect smart phone application. The city administartion is also aware and serious about the services and their complaints resolvement, which is evident by the numbers of city worker application complaints and employee generated complaints. Last but not the least, the self service and twitter options like web based methods are also popular in Allston-Brighton.
9 Cost Burdened Households
The dataset for American Community Survey 2012-2016 which is available on MAPC Data Common website was utilized to extract the cost burdened households for Allston-Brighton. The information available in this dataset are average values at census tract level. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines cost-burdened families as those “who pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing” and “may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation, and medical care.”
The graph below represents the number of cost burdened households for 17 different census tracts in the year 2016. The cost burdened households are further divided in owner occupied and renter properties. Similar to owner occupancy section discussed above, there are more cost burdened renter households compared to owner occupied cost burdened households. These numbers indicate towards an urgent need for financially accessible housing in the neighborhoods for sustainable living conditions.
9.1 Property Distribution
9.2 Owner-Occupied Properties
9.3 Renter-Occupied Properties
